The ooze of pleasantness and bliss

A bad week, putting it mildly. I listen to the news regularly, but after the Boston bombing, I was paying special attention Tuesday. An extremely powerful earthquake was being reported in rural Iran. Then, Wednesday morning, reports of an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West Texas. At some point interspersed in there, authorities in Mississippi made an arrest of an individual suspected of mailing poisoned letters to the president, and a member of congress. On Tuesday morning, as I pondered the news from the night before and the breaking news from Iran, I passed a group of what I deduced to be Mennonites playing volleyball on a sand court in Ocean Dunes. I'm not sure I can capture or explain the minutia that makes towns like Duck the way they are and separates them from the rest of the life as we know it. Maybe it's in these snapshots, that I might find some sense of what it is though. On a placid, gentle, warm oceanside morning, as Bostonians were waking bewildered by the previous day's senseless carnage, as Iranians were in the midst of suffering and loss, and as Texans in the town of West were on the brink of disaster; eight young women in cheerful dresses and matching bonnets played an impromptu game of beach volleyball. I'm finding it difficult to imagine a more poignant or bizarre juxtaposition. I cannot. Truth may be stranger than fiction. Truth in a hamlet devoted to relaxing by the ocean as the world goes flying by is far stranger. I completely accept that if you isolated any small town, neighborhood--even in a big city--you could make observations similar to mine. This is extraordinary however, to my mind. Yes there will be a share of human suffering on a daily basis. And yes any pleasant town could be seen in contrast to this. I must maintain however, the following is extraordinary. There are less than eight hundred permanent residents of Duck. It's only April. It's not a holiday. So with the smattering of vacationers visiting, say two hundred and fifty or so people here to work for the day, no permanent mennonite community, and me by no means scouring the streets ( I do have a job...); How does this happen. By chance, with a random sample of less than 3000 possible humans do I happen onto the street where eight young women are playing volleyball in bonnets. They were all beaming with happiness by the way, having the time of their lives. That is why I feel compelled to share these observations. The ooze of pleasantness and bliss can be so pervasive at times it would seem saccharine, if it weren't so blissful.